PHRENOLOGY FOR THE MILLIONS

KIRKUS REVIEW

Phrenology has been ""lumped with the less reliable occult sciences"" but it had quite a day back in the early 1800's when such astonishing readings as the following were given--a clergyman studying an asylum inmate who believed he should be the President of the United States and/or the King of England ""after considerable observation came to the conclusion that the patient's illness came as the result of an enlarged organ of Self-esteem."" Phrenology, or the study of heads is hardly a heady subject. This gives its history and a rundown of the work of its developers--Franz Joseph Gall who could tell just what crime a convict had committed up to the Fowler brothers of America who ""gave the public what they wanted."" Perhaps we suffer from an enlarged organ of Cynicism but since ""Phrenology is dead today. a rather inglorious corpse"" why is this book being published except for the lumpenproletariat?

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